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I Really Have Been Enjoying Performing More Lately Than I Have In A Long Time And You Know, It's All About That Sort Of Centered Feeling That I Have Now. You Know, Thanks To, Not Just My Kid, But Her Father Before Her. You Know, I Have A Kind Of A Grounding Through Them That I Really Relish, And I Think Is Also Good For My Work, You Know.

-Ani DiFranco

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I Really Have Been

Ani DiFranco

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I Really Have Been Enjoying Performing More Lately Than I Have In A Long Time And You Know, It's All About That Sort Of Centered Feeling That I Have Now. You Know, Thanks To, Not Just My Kid, But Her Father Before Her. You Know, I Have A Kind Of A Grounding Through Them That I Really Relish, And I Think Is Also Good For My Work, You Know.

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I Fear That Donald Trump Will Continue To Be Followed Around By The Media In Its Totality As He Continues To Rail Against Hillary Clinton.

I Did A Lot Of Work With Myself Over The Course Of Being Pregnant And The First Few Months Of Being Pregnant. It's Nice, The Pace Of Being Pregnant; It Gives You A Long Time To Not Just Germinate A Baby But Germinate The Mother That You're Gonna Be.

I Know The Biggest Crime Is Just To Throw Up Your Hands, Say, This Has Nothing To Do With Me, I Just Want To Live As Comfortably As I Can...

I Mean, Playing Music At Home And Writing And Hanging Out With My Guitar Is Kind Of Medicinal For Me, But When I Bring The Songs To People On Stage, It's Very Joyous.

There Are So Many Things That We Have To Be Very Concerned About. But I Always Come Back To Feminism. People Look At Me Sideways Now And Are Like, "with Everything Going On, The Destruction Of The Environment, These Endless Wars, This Capitalism That Has A Stranglehold On Our Culture And Our World And You're Talking About Feminism Still?"

For Me, The Stronger Ground I Have In My Personal Life, Then The More Will I Have To Fight The Good Fight.

Fight The Good Fight

I'm An All Powerful Amazon Warrior, Not Just Some Sniveling Girl.

Smile Pretty And Watch Your Back

In Order To Keep Anything Cultural, Logical, Or Ideological, You Have To Reinvent The Reality Of It.

I've Been Collecting Some More High-end Guitars. I Have An Old Martin D28 From The '60s, A Beautiful, Classic Martin That I Know I Played On 'mariachi.'

I'm The Color Me Happy Girl, Miss Live And Let Live. And When They're Out For Blood, I Always Give.

I'm Pretty Much A Workaholic, But When You're Doing What You Love It's Hard To Think Of A Reason To Stop.

Doing What You Love

Like A Lot Of People, I Had This Naive Hope That Barack Obama Would Fix Everything Quickly. You Know, The Culture Of Celebrity In This Country Leads Us Away From Democratic Ways Of Thinking And Into This Hero Worship. And So Of Course, One Man Cannot Swoop In And Fix Everything On His Own. It's Much More Complicated And Difficult Than That, And Progressives In This Country Since Then Have Had To Come To Terms With The Fact That We Need To Do More Than Actually Get Out Of Our House And Vote. It's An Ongoing Process To Turn The Tide.

Somedays The Line I Walk Turns Out To Be Straight - Other Days The Line Tends To Deviate.

Mostly, I Stay Out Of Social Media Conversations. But Sometimes, They Hunt Me Down And Shoot At Me Anyway!

You Rhapsodize About Beauty, And My Eyes Glaze. Everything That I Love Is Ugly. I Mean Really, You Would Be Amazed. Just Do Me A Favor, It's The Least That You Can Do, Just Don't Treat Me Like I Am Something That Happened To You.

I Am Not A Pretty Girl. I Don't Want To Be A Pretty Girl. No, I Want To Be More Than A Pretty Girl.

Someday You're Going To Get Hungry And Eat Most Of The Words You Just Said.

I Have Earned My Disillusionment.

Disillusionment

Second Wave Feminism Started With Consciousness-raising Groups, Which Sounds "big" But It's Really Just House Parties. Women Getting Together And Saying, "you Feel This Way?! Me Too!" Hanging Out Is Consciousness-raising.

Change The Narrative, Change The Laws.

I Think The Gay Community Should Get Smart And Drop The Word Marriage. Do You Really Need To Change Every Right-wing Christian To Make Sure You Get Your Equal Rights? Eyes On The Prize, We Should Be Sticking To Getting Equal Rights.

I've Been Trying To Learn How To Not Be So Conflicted About Things Like My Own Anger. I've Always Had A Place In My Music For My Anger As A Way Of Compensating For Not Having A Mechanism To Express It In My Everyday Life. So I've Been Trying To Be More True To Myself, And That Helps Me To Chill Out A Little Bit. But Politically, Uh-uh. No.

They Can Call Me Crazy If I Fail, All The Chance That I Need, Is One-in-a-million And They Can Call Me Brilliant If I Succeed.

Patriarchy Is Like The Elephant In The Room That We Don't Talk About, But How Could It Not Affect The Planet Radically When It's The Superstructure Of Human Society?

Feel Free To Listen, Feel Free To Stare.

There's This Brutal Imperial Power, That My Passport Says I Represent. But It Will Never Represent Where My Heart Lives, Only Vaguely Where It Went.

Time Is Not A Thing That's Ours To Lose.

I Am Writing Graffiti On Your Body. I Am Drawing The Story Of How Hard We Tried.

If You Want To Challenge The System, Don't Go To Bed With It.

I Do It For The Joy It Brings Because I'm A Joyful Girl Because The World Owes Me Nothing And We Owe Each Other The World

No One's Gonna Sympathize When We Crash, They'll Say You Hit What You Head For, You Get What You Ask.

A Little Bird Told Me That Jumping Is Easy And The Falling Is Fun, Right Up Until You Hit Sidewalk Shivering And Stunned.

I Don't Care If They Eat Me Alive, I've Got Better Things To Do Then Survive.

I'm Aware Enough, I Guess, Of American Labor History.

I Like To Be An Inspiration And An Example Of The Idea That You Can Be Independent, And It's No Problem, And You Can Pay Your Rent, And It's Empowering, And It's Great. And That's True, But It Also Takes A Really Long Time, And You Have To Have A Lot Of Patience And A Lot Of Conviction In Why You Want To Remain Independent.

I Have Something To Prove, As Long As I Know There's Something That Needs Improvement, And You Know That Everytime I Move, I Make A Woman's Movement.

If You’re Not Angry, Then You’re Just Stupid, You Don’t Care. How Else Can You React When Something’s So Unfair?

I Think It Is Very Useful To Know Ourselves, But When We Start Naming And Labeling, That Is Dangerous, That Gets Problematic. It Negates That Things Are Always Changing. Besides, It's Hard To Pin A Label Onto Something That's Always Moving.

Who Says I Like Right Angles? These Are Not My Laws, These Are Not My Rules.

I Was Supposed To Be Cool About This, Yeah, I Remember - Cool Was The Plan. Tried To Keep It All Under Wraps, But The Wraps Kept Going Slack. I Keep Turning Round, I Keep Coming Back.

The Way I Play Guitar Is Very, Very Hard And I Bloody Myself Incredibly Without The Tape. And The Nails Are My Picks.

Science Chases Money, And Money Chases Its Tail, And The Best Minds Of My Generation Cannot Make Bail.

Words Are Hotter Than Flames. Words Are Wetter Than Water.

[amy Ray And I] Both Have This Part Of Our Brain That Makes Us Think That Everybody Should And Will Be Nice And Friendly And Forthcoming. And Then We're Completely Disillusioned. We Have All These Grand Plans. One Of Them Is The Rolling Thunder Pussy Revue. There's All These Women's Festivals Going On This Summer, And We Don't Think They're As Adventurous As They Could Be. Lilith Fair-right Away, By The Name, You Know They Aren't Pushing The Envelope Hard Enough.

And Half Of Learning To Play Is Learning What Not To Play And She's Learning The Spaces She Leaves Have Their Own Things To Say And She's Trying To Sing Just Enough So That The Air Around Her Moves And Make Music Like Mercy That Gives What It Is And Has Nothing To Prove She Crawls Out On A Limb And Begins To Build Her Home And It's Enough Just To Look Around And To Know That She's Not Alone Up Up Up Up Up Up Up Points The Spire Of The Steeple But God's Work Isn't Done By God It's Done By People

The World Is My Oyster. The Road Is My Home. And I Know That I'm Better Off Alone.

When I Was Four Years Old They Tried To Test My Iq, They Showed Me This Picture Of Three Oranges And A Pear. They Asked Me Which One Is Different And Does Not Belong; They Taught Me Different Was Wrong.

Outside Sleep's Open Window, Between The Drops Of Rain, History Is Writing A Recipe Book For Every Earthly Pain.

Now The Profile Of Our Country Looks A Little Less Hard Nosed / But That Picket Line Persisted And That Clinic's Since Been Closed / They Keep Pounding Their Fists On Reality Hoping It Will Break / But I Don't Think There's A One Of Us Leads A Life Free Of Mistakes

I Basically Get Stereotyped A Lot In Terms Of Being A Girl And Writing 'chick' Music For Teenage Girls Or Something. I Think, If Anything, The Press Kind Of, Because Of My Gender And My Age, Tends To Kind Of Relegate My Work To This Sort Of Special-interest Group. It's Part Of The Cultural Dynamic, I Guess.

You've Already Put More Than Enough Energy Into Worry. That's All Women Have Been Allowed To Do, Historically.

Before Katrina, You Didn't See Criticism Of The Bush Administration In The Media. Here They Are, Stealing Elections, Enacting Illegal Wars, Huge Crimes Against Humanity And Democracy, And You Didn't Even See Criticism. It Wasn't Until Katrina That People Started To Come Down On Them.

Squint Your Eyes And Look Closer I'm Not Between You And Your Ambition I Am A Poster Girl With No Poster I Am Thirty-two Flavors And Then Some And I'm Beyond Your Peripheral Vision So You Might Want To Turn Your Head Cause Someday You Might Find You're Starving And Eating All Of The Words You Said.

A Good Brain Ain't Diddley, If You Don't Have The Facts.

I Speak Without Reservation, From What I Know And Who I Am. I Do So With The Understanding That All People Should Have The Right To Offer Their Voices To The Chorus Whether The Result Is Harmony Or Dissonance. The Worldsong Is A Colorless Dirge Without The Differences That Distinguish Us, And It Is That Difference Which Should Be Celebrated Not Condemned.

I Walk Like I'm On A Mission 'cause That's The Way I Groove. I Got More And More To Do And Less And Less To Prove.

And Thoughts Of No Other Man But You Could Possibly Get Through The Picket Lines To Enter Into My Mind.

How Come I Can Pick My Ears, But Not My Nose? Who Made Up That Rule Anyway? How Can You Say That's The Way It Is, That's Just The Way It Goes, Why Don't You Decide Fore Yourself What You Can Do?

We Are Wise Women, We Are Giggling Girls. We Both Carry A Smile To Show When We're Pleased, We Both Carry A Switchblade In Our Sleeves.

Some People Wear Their Heart Up On Their Sleeve. I Wear Mine Underneath My Right Pant Leg, Strapped To My Boot.

I Turned My Pain Into Art And My Hard Work Into A Career. Helping Myself Has Helped Others. Helping Others Has Helped Me.

I Just See A Lot Of People Who Are Really Terrified Of The "f-word." A Lot Of Women These Days, A Lot Of Young Women Don't Want To Call Themselves Feminists.

My Idea Of Feminism Is Self-determination, And It's Very Open-ended: Every Woman Has The Right To Become Herself, And Do Whatever She Needs To Do.

I Hope Progressive Ways Of Thinking Will Permeate The "mainstream" More And More In The Coming Years. Goddess Knows We Have Endured A Very Long Spell (thirty Plus Years) Of Regressive Thinking And Hyper Conservativism Dominating Our Culture And National Discourse. It Necessitates Risk Taking And Rule Breaking By People In All Walks Of Life To Swing That Pendulum Back Though.

Life Is A B Movie: It's Stupid And It's Strange, It's A Directionless Story, The Dialogue Is Lame, But In The 'he Said She Said' Sometimes There's Some Poetry, If You Turn Your Back Long Enough And Let It Happen Naturally.

I Am A Work In Progress Dressed In The Fabric Of A World Unfolding.

I've Never Had A Very Closely Connected Family. My Parents Split Up When I Was Young And I Was Living With My Mom For A Little While, Then I Was Kind Of Just On My Own Really Young. It Wasn't Some Kind Of Global Tragedy, It Was Just Never Really A Very Close-knit Family. So There Was Support In The Sense That They Didn't Stand In My Way.

You've Got Your Whole Life To Do Something, And That's Not Very Long. So Why Don't You Give Me A Call When You're Willing To Fight For What You Think Is Real, For What You Think Is Right.

We Have A Complete Void Of Progressive Politics In This Country Right Now. The Will Of The People Goes Ignored And Unrealized. I'm Searching For The People That Can Enter The Political System, A Strong Third Party. We Need To Consolidate.

If More People Were Screamin', I Could Relax.

We've Got Ego's Like Hairdos.

You're Trying To Fight Gravity On A Planet That Insists That Love Is Like Falling, And Falling Is Like This.

I Don't Need Anyone To Hold Me, I Can Hold My Own.

I'll Walk The Plank And I'll Jump With A Smile, Cause If I'm Gonna Go Down I'm Gonna Do It With Style.

Feminism Is Not Only For Women It's Something Everyone Can Participate In, And Evolve Together, As The First Step In The Right Direction. I See Feminism As A Tool To Achieve That Balance And Peace.

What Bugs Me Is That You Believe What You're Saying. What Bothers Me Is That You Don't Know How You Feel. What Scares Me Is That While You're Telling Me Stories, You Actually Believe That They Are Real.

Love Sets Fire To Your Schedule, And Then Calls An End To Time.

Imagine You're A Girl, Just Trying To Finally Come Clean, Knowing Full Well They'd Prefer You Were Dirty And Smiling.

Spring Is Super In The Supermarkets And The Strawberries Prance And Glow Never Mind That They're All Kinda Tart And Tasteless As Strawberries Go Meanwhile Wild Things Are Not For Sale Anymore Than They Are For Show So I'll Be Outside, In Love With The Kind Of Beauty It Takes More Than Eyes To Know

I Feel Like We Need To Understand Feminism More As A Tool To Mediate, Counteract, To Ultimately Defeat Patriarchy And Restore Balance To Our Government, Our Culture And Our Ways Of Thinking And Structuring The World. I Think We've Had A Very "masculine" Sensibility For A Long Time, And I Think We Need To Go Back To The Roots Of Social Imbalance. I Think We Have To Try To Right That First, And From There And All These More Pressing Issues Will Follow.

It's Not Important To Be Defined, It's Only Important To Use Your Time Well.

We Need A Radically Truthful Way To Acknowledge Reproductive Freedom.

When I Look Around I Think This, This Is Good Enough; And I Laugh At Whatever Life Brings Because When I Look Down, I Just Miss All The Good Stuff And When I Look Up, I Just Trip Over Things.

The Stronger I Am In My Personal Life, The More Energy I Have To Look Outward, To Address My Society.

Women Who Don't Control Their Own Reproductive Rights Are Not Free.

Reproductive Rights

When I Was Like Sixteen, I Was A Total Chick I Had Big Hair. I Was Seen As This Attractive Girl, And I Would Get All This Attention. And Then I Just Cut Off My Hair, And I Quit Playing That Game.

But As Bad As I Am, I'm Proud Of The Fact That I'm Worse Than I Seem

Birth Is The Epicenter Of Women's Power

Inspirational Pregnancy

As Any Mom Knows, Having A Baby Is An Extremely Creative Act And To Love And Create A Baby, It's On Par With Any Other Creative Act That We Could Come Up With.

I Did Not Design This Game; I Did Not Name The Stakes. I Just Happen To Like Apples; And I Am Not Afraid Of Snakes.

The World Owes Us Nothing; We Owe Each Other The World.

Art May Imitate Life, But Life Imitates Tv.

Every Time I Say Something They Find Hard To Hear, They Chalk It Up To My Anger, And Never To Their Own Fear.

My Writing Just Kind Of Exists Out There In The Air-it's All Sort Of Intended As Spoken, Or Sung, Word. So, To Commit Them To The Page...that Way Was Kind Of Intimidating To Me, Yet Intriguing, To Try To Reflect The Rhythms And Connotations And Emotions That You Can Deliver, Speaking-wise, On A Page.

People Talk About My Image Like I Come In Two Dimensions, Like Lipstick Is A Sign Of My Declining Mind, Like What I Happen To Be Wearing The Day That Someone Takes My Picture Is My New Statement For All Womankind.

My Music Doesn't Really Sound Like Punk Music, It's Acoustic. And It Doesn't Really Sound Like Folk Music 'cause I'm Thrashing Too Hard And Emoting A Little Too Much For The Sort Of Introspective, Respectful, Sort-of Folk Genre Thing. I'm Really Into Punk And Folk As Music That Comes Out Of Communities And Is Very Genuine And Very Immediate And Not Commercial.

People Used To Make Records, As In The Record Of An Event, The Event Of People Playing Music In A Room, And Now Everything's Cross-marketing, Its About Sunglasses And Shoes, Or Guns And Drugs That You Choose.

We Have To Really Be Intentional Right Now About Holding The Media Accountable, And Taking Back The Discourse And Terms Of Discussion. It's Been Hijacked.

I've Been A Long Time Coming, And I'll Be A Long Time Gone. You've Got Your Whole Life To Do Something, And That's Not Very Long.

Why Do You Think I Write These Feminist Songs, To Try And Teach Myself To Respect Myself. You Know, It's Not Because I'm A Hero.

I Wonder What You Look Like Under Your T-shirt. I Wonder What You Sound Like When You're Not Wearing Words. I Wonder What We Have When We're Not Pretending.

Lying In Bed, You Know, You Don't Seem So Tall.

There's A Crowd Of People Harbored In Each Person There Are So Many Roles That We Play.

The Bathroom Mirror Has Not Budged, The Woman Who Lives There Can Tell The Truth From The Stuff They Say And Looks Me In The Eye- Says Do You Prefer The Easy Way? No? Well Ok Then, Dont Cry.

I'm Recording Our History Now On The Bedroom Wall, And When We Leave The Landlord Will Come And Paint Over It All.

I'm An Atheist How Unfortunate It Is To Assign Responsibility To The Higher Up For Justice Amongst People.

I've Been Saying The Occupy Movement Has Got The Ball Rolling, And Now We Need To Take The Fight To The Great Indoors!

Occupy Movement

A Lesson Must Be Lived In Order To Be Learned And The Clarity To See And Stop This Now That Is What I've Earned

Men Make Angry Music And It's Called Rock-and-roll; Women Include Anger In Their Vocabulary And Suddenly They're Angry And Militant.

I Am A Thinned-skinned Type. I Am Very Sensitive, Very Emotional. Vulnerability Is Kind Of Always A Part Of My Day.

I Don't Take Good Pictures 'cause I Have The Kind Of Beauty That Moves.

One Of My Rules Is: Never Try To Do Anything. Just Do It.

These Days I Keep A Journal, So I'm Constantly Sketching Down My Thoughts, Or Lines That Come To Me...ideas For Songs. And Then When I Have A Moment To Myself, I'll Sit Down With My Guitar And Open My Journal, And Start Kind Of Massaging Things Together, And See If A Song Takes Shape. Or Sometimes, I'll Just Be Hanging Out With My Guitar And Come Up With A Chord Progression Or A Lick, And That'll Sort Of Sit Around For A While Waiting To Marry Itself To Some Words. So It's Sort Of Haphazard And It's Like...junk Culture. I Go Around Finding Shiny Objects And I Glue Them Together Laughs.

I Do Believe That Music Has An Intense Power To Connect Us Together, To Inspire Us To Become Ourselves.

Don't Treat Me Like I Am Something That Happened To You.

What I Like Way Better Than Lgbt In Terms Of Labeling Sexuality Actually Is A Scheme That Comes To Me From My Friend Animal Prufrock Wherein One Is Identified Not By What They Supposedly "are" But Rather By What They Are Into. Which Brings Us To The Terms Hemosexual, Shemosexual, And Mosexual.

You Can't Start With Imbalance And End With Peace, Be That In Your Own Body, In An Ecosystem Or Between A Government And Its People. What We Need To Strive For Is Not Perfection, But Balance.

God Forbid You Be An Ugly Girl, 'course Too Pretty Is Also Your Doom, 'cause Everyone Harbors A Secret Hatred For The Prettiest Girl In The Room.

You Are So Lame. You Always Disappoint Me. It's Kind Of Like Our Running Joke But It's Really Not Funny And I Just Want You To Live Up To The Image Of You I Create.

My Songs Are Just Little Letters To Me.

Self-preservation Is A Full-time Occupation.

Self Preservation

It's The Ground That We Walk On, It's Where We Sit, It's The Language That We Use. It's A Difficult Undertaking, But I Think Without Healing That And Creating More Of A Balance Between The Sexes, We Will Never Have Balance Globally. I Feel Like I Am Going Deeper And Deeper Into This Space Where I Came From That I Barely Understood.

Strangers Are Exciting, Their Mystery Never Ends. But, There's Nothing Like Looking At Your Own History In The Faces Of Your Friends.

I Am Not An Angry Girl, But It Seems I've Got Everyone Fooled. Every Time I Say Something They Find Hard To Hear, They Chalk It Up To My Anger And Not To Their Own Fear. Imagine You're A Girl Just Trying To Finally Come Clean, Knowing Full Well They Prefer You Dirty And Smiling.

I Know There Is Strength In The Differences Between Us. I Know There Is Comfort Where We Overlap.

Individual Differences

My Main Tactic Is To Focus On The People I Respect. The People I Think Are Great People. Do I Have Their Respect? Do I Have Their Support? If The Answer Is "yes," Then I'm Doing Ok.

And God Help You If You Are An Ugly Girl Course Too Pretty Is Also Your Doom Cause Everyone Harbors A Secret Hatred For The Prettiest Girl In The Room And God Help You If You Are A Pheonix And You Dare To Rise Up From The Ash A Thousand Eyes Will Smolder With Jealousy While You Are Just Flying Back

I Love My Country, By Which I Mean, I Am Indebted Joyfully, To All The People Throughout Its History, Who Have Fought The Government To Make Right, Where So Many Cunning Sons And Daughters, Our Foremothers And Forefathers, Came Singing Through Slaughter, Came Through Hell And High Water, So That We Could Stand Here, And Behold Breathlessly The Sight, How A Raging River Of Tears, Cut A Grand Canyon Of Light... Why Can't All Decent Men And Women, Call Themselves Feminists? Out Of Respect, For Those Who Fought For This...

There Is No Alternative. A Democrat Is A Republican Is A Big Businessman, And We're All Consumers Instead Of Citizens. It Just Manifests In The Culture, In The Music, In The Art. I Feel A Little Panicky About It.

It's Great Being Your Own Boss, But Then, You Know, You Make Your Own Mistakes, You Know, And You Own Them. You Know, So It's Empowering, And It's Also Humbling Along The Way.

The Old Farm Roads A Four Lane That Leads To The Mall, And Our Dreams Are All Guillotines Waiting To Fall.

Taken Out Of Context I Must Seem So Strange.

My Mother Was A Feminist, And She Gave Me Some Tools Of Self-possession And Self-empowerment, But Now That I Have Lived Here For Forty-three Years, It's, Like, Whoa, There Is Just So Much More To Do, Other Than Become Myself. I'm Still Talking About It. I Still Drop The P-word, "patriarchy," On Unsuspecting People In Everyday Conversations.

I Can Jump Ship And Swim-- That The Ocean Will Hold Me, That There's Got To Be More Than This Boat I'm In.

I Sing Sometimes For The War That I Fight, 'cause Every Tool Is A Weapon If You Hold It Right.

There Are So Many Things That We Have To Be Very Concerned About. But I Always Come Back To Feminism.

I Really Have Been Enjoying Performing More Lately Than I Have In A Long Time And You Know, It's All About That Sort Of Centered Feeling That I Have Now. You Know, Thanks To, Not Just My Kid, But Her Father Before Her. You Know, I Have A Kind Of A Grounding Through Them That I Really Relish, And I Think Is Also Good For My Work, You Know.

And If There's Anything I Do It's Change And Grow. I'm Just A Living Being. Every Year Of My Life I Seem To Learn That Everything I Know Is Wrong.

I'm Searching, As We All Are, For Ways To Feel Good About Myself. Certainly, Looking In The Mirror Doesn't Do It!

Looking In The Mirror

I Believe The Act Of Giving Birth To Be The Single Most Miraculous Thing A Human Being Can Do And It Is Surely The Moment When A Lot Of Women Finally Understand The Depth Of Their Power. You Think It Can’t Possibly Be Done, You Think You Can’t Possibly Take The Pain, And Then You Do-—and Afterward You Look At Yourself In A Whole New Way. If You Can Do That, You Can Do Anything.

It's Just Hard To Travel In The Shadow Of Regret. In Fact, It's So Hard That I Actually Haven't Left Yet.

I'd Rather Suffer The Consequences Of Truth Than Of Silence.

There's A Paradox In Every Paradigm.

I've Been Waiting For Sleep To Offer Up The Day With Both Hands.

When You Sit Right Down In The Middle Of Yourself You're Gonna Wanna Have A Comfortable Chair.

God Help You If You Are A Phoenix And You Dare To Rise Up From The Ash A Thousand Eyes Will Smolder With Jealousy While You Are Just Flying Past

I Don't Like My Language Watered Down, I Don't Like My Edges Rounded Off.

When I Was A Teenager In The '80s, I Was The Only Girl In The Guitar Shop. Now If You Walk Into A Music Store, It's Mostly Teenage Girls. It's Great! It's An Expansion Of Possibilities For Young Women, Finding A Way To Tools Even If They Aren't Directly Handed Those Tools By Adults.

First Decide What You Got To Do, Then Go Out And Do It. All We Can Do Is To See Each Other Through It.

We Negotiate With Chaos For Some Sense Of Satisfaction.

If You Like It, Let It Be, And If You Don't Please Do The Same.

I Hate It When People Don't Recognize The Work Of Women As Being Universal, Or Having Any Import To The World At Large, As Opposed To Men's Work, Which Is Generally Tends To Be Seen As More Universal - Men's Writing About Their Own Experience Tends To Be Put In A Broader Context.

We Barely Have Time To React In This World, Let Alone Rehearse.

In Any Marginalized Community, Whether People Identify Themselves Or Not Affects Us All.

I Was Attracted To A Lot Of Different Art Forms - Dancing, Painting. But There's Something About Music That People Hold So Close. It's Such A Powerful Art Form, And That's Why I Live For It.

People Who Are Just Starting Out Are Always Sort Of Coming To Me For Advice As The Example Of "independent Girl," And Lots Of People Ask, Well, How Did You Get The Booking Agent Or The National Distribution Or The Tours? And I Look At Them Like, "good Lord! Relax!" I Mean, How I Did It Was To Not Care About It And To Not Even Think About It For Years And Years. All I Thought About Was Getting The Next Little Gig In The Little Bar, And I Get This Sense That People Want Me To Give Them The Secret Formula Or The Magic Trick To Make It All Happen.

I Still Define Myself By The Places That I've Been.

And I Was Shocked, To See The Mistakes Of Each Generation, Will Just Fade Like A Radio Station, If You Drive Out Of Range...

I Noticed With Older Songs That I Perform That I'm Coming From A Different Place With Them Now...it Mutates The Vibe And Even The Meaning Of The Same Words When You Have A Different Spirit, If The Person Singing Is Different. I Like That, To Be Able To Sing An Emotionally Wrought Song From A More Centered Place, Or To Sing An Eager, Youthful Song From A More Experienced Place. It Kind Of Colors The Songs Differently, And It Keeps Them Fresh.

Music Has As Many Roles As People Make It.

Now I Wonder Who Is Gonna Be President: Tweedle Dumb, Or Tweedle Dumber-- And Who Is Gonna Have The Big Block Buster Box Office This Summer.

I Know Men Are Delicate Origami Creatures Who Need Women To Unfold Them, Hold Them When They Cry. But I Am Tired Of Being Your Savior And I Am Tired Of Telling You Why.

I Seriously Hate Pop Music And All Things Super-commercial.

We Get A Little Further From Perfection, Each Year On The Road, I Guess That's What They Call Character, I Guess That's Just The Way It Goes, Better To Be Dusty Than Polished, Like Some Store Window Mannequin, Why Don't You Touch Me Where I'm Rusty, Let Me Stain Your Hands

Subtract Out The Impact And The Fall Is All You Get. So Here's Two Beers To Remember Why And Three More To Forget.

I Used To Be A Superhero; No One Could Touch Me, Not Even Myself. You Are Like A Phone Booth I Somehow Stumbled Into, And Now Look At Me - I Am Just Like Everybody Else.

But In The Garden Of Simple, Where All Of Us Are Nameless, You Were Never Anything But Beautiful To Me.

I Will Not Be Afraid To Let My Talent Shine.

In A Man's World, I Am A Woman By Birth And After 19 Times Around I Have Found - They Will Stop At Nothing Once They Know What You Are Worth.

Just Let Me Go, We Have To Be Able To Criticize What We Love, To Say What We Have To Say 'cause If You're Not Trying To Make Something Better, Then As Far As I Can Tell, You Are Just In The Way.

Fate Is Not Just Whose Cooking Smells Good, But Which Way The Wind Blows

[the 'corporate Takeover Of People's Lives'] Also Accounts For A Lot Of Homogenization Of Culture. There Are Fast Food Restaurants Everywhere. Every Place Tastes The Same.

Having More Exposure Is Kind Of A Bittersweet Thing For Me, Honestly, Because It's Nice To Have A Little More Job Security In Life Now.

I Want Somebody Who Sees The Pointlessness And Still Keeps Their Purpose In Mind; I Want Somebody Who Has A Tortured Soul ...some Of The Time

I'm Home In New Orleans!

And I Try To Draw The Line But It Ends Up Running Down The Middle Of Me Most Of The Time.

Up Up Up Up Up Up Points The Spire Of The Steeple But God's Work Isn't Done By God It's Done By People

I Would Rather Have These Things Weigh On My Mind. At The End Of This Tunnel Of Guilt And Shame, There Must Be A Light Of Some Kind.

If You Don't Ask The Right Question, Every Answer Seems Wrong -

I Seriously Hate Pop Music And All Things Super-commercial, So I'd Be Hard Pressed To Feel Embarrassed By Anything I Listen To. Besides, I Have A Three-year-old, So I Don't Have Time For Guilty Pleasures Anyway!

Maybe We Are Both Good People Who've Done Some Bad Things.

Either You Are A Feminist Or You Are A Sexist/misogynist. There Is No Box Marked 'other'.

They Taught Me Different Was Wrong.

I Am Still Praying For Revolution.

I Love All Those Great 'f' Words - Feminism, Folk Music.

I Know My Mind Is Made Of Matter But I Need To Know Exactly What Is The Matter At It's Core? Because My Heart Is Just A Muscle And Simply Put, It's Sore.

These Days, My Main Guitar Amps Have Been Magnatone. They're Beautiful. Magnatones Have Actual Tremolo, Which I Recently Learned About Guitar Amps. Often What Guitar Amps Call Vibrato Is Really Just A Volume Up And Down. But Magnatone Has A True Vibrato, Which Is Pitch Bending. And So, It's Just A Lush Sound.

Like How Could You Do Nothing, And Say, 'i'm Doing My Best.' How Could You Take Almost Everything, And Then Come Back For The Rest? How Could You Beg Me To Stay, Reach Out Your Hands And Plead, And Then Pack Up Your Eyes And Run Away As Soon As I Agreed?

What Doesn't Bend, Breaks.

I Had A Little Bit Of Resistance To The Idea Of Taking Energy Away From My Work, And The Baby Comes Along And, Lo And Behold, That's Exactly What Happens.

I Would Like To Perfect The Art Of Being Studiously Aloof

My Political Mission Is As Acute As Ever. For Me, In Addition To Kind Of Looking At The World And Trying To Engage In My Society Politically, Having The Kid Around Sort Of Makes Me Check In With Myself. I Think You're All Busy Trying To Fix The World, But What About Yourself?

Then I Show Up Steady Ready And Proud And I Find I've Forgotten How To Talk Out Loud. Isn't It Just Like You To Bring Me To My Knees?

Those Who Call The Shots Are Never In The Line Of Fire.

When Everything Else Seems Unclear, At Least I'll Know I Do It For The Joy It Brings.

I Sincerely Believe Patriarchy To Be At The Root Of All Of Our Social Diseases And Feminism, It's Antidote, To Be A Prerequisite To Peace On Earth. Feminism Provides An Alternative Way Of Thinking And Structuring Things That Focuses On And Prioritizes Relationships And De-emphasizes Hierarchy, Separation And Domination.

I Envy Your Ignorance, I Hear That It's Bliss.

I Am A Work In Progress Dressed In The Fabric Of A World Unfolding Offering Me Intricate Patterns Of Questions Rhythms That Never Come Clean And Strengths That You Still Haven't Seen

I Can't Wait To Get Back To New York City Where At Least When I Walk Down The Streat, No One Ever Hesitates To Tell Me Exactly What They Think Of Me.

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Douglas MacArthur

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